It is common practice in the manufacture of electrical harnesses to bind or tie the wires of the harness at different locations along the length of the harness. The binding is commonly done by means of bundle tie devices which can be manually applied to the wires at the desired locations so that the wires are gathered into compacted sheaves at these locations. When bundle tie devices are used, the harness wires are neatly restrained by the tie devices and the harness is thereby much easier to handle and manipulate when it is assembled to the equipment with which it is used.
While bundle tie devices serve the purpose of bundling harness wires adequately, they are relatively expensive and the task of applying bundle ties to harnesses is time consuming. It would be desirable to have a relatively simple taping device for applying inexpensive adhesive tape to the wires of a harness in place of the more expensive bundle tie devices. The present invention in accordance with one aspect thereof is directed to the achievement of a taping apparatus particularly intended for harness wires which is capable of gathering the wires into compacted bundles and then applying tape to the bundles to form compacted sheaves.
It is also common practice in the electrical industry to produce electrical harnesses by automatic or semi-automatic harness making machines which have a wire feeding mechanism, insertion stations for inserting the feed wires into the connectors, and a conveyor for transporting completed harnesses from the machine. It would be desirable to provide a taping apparatus on machines of this type and in accordance with a further aspect thereof, the invention is directed to the achievement of a taping apparatus that can be used with known types of harness making machines.
A bundling and taping apparatus in accordance with the invention comprises first and second bundling rolls which have cylindrical surfaces that are in contact with each other in a nip zone. First and second adhesive tapes are drawn from tape dispensers and fed into the nip zone from one side of the rolls. The tapes extend through the nip zone to the other side of the rolls so that when a bundle of wires is presented to the rolls and passed through the nip zone, the first and second tapes will be applied to the bundle. The rolls are provided with wire compacting and bundling means so that the wires are gathered into a compact and neat appearing sheaf prior to application of the tape to the wires. A tape cutter is provided adjacent to the other side of the nip zone which cuts the tape between adjacent wire bundles.
Several taping apparatuses as described above can be mounted in side-by-side spaced-apart relationship on a cable making machine at the discharge station of the machine. As the completed electrical harnesses are discharged from a harness making machine, they are passed through the bundling rolls of the several taping apparatuses and tape is applied to the harness at several locations.